Here’s a hand-picked, freshly-disinterred zombie cake. Eat it before it eats you!

Happy birthday Jamie, wish you full of health, romance and poetry…. it’s almost a month, since your birthday … my non existing dog ate the memo about your birthday :|

I’m so sorry it’s so late, but know I was thinking about you on the 31st and wishing you well then too. I really hope it was a wonderful day for you, you’re a great presence here on 43, thank you for that.

(hugs)

and sorry I’m late but you know best intentions mixed with personal crises will screw everything up…..I hope your day was great, and I am sending happy wishes your way…..

Hope you had a great day!

but I hope you had a wonderful birthday.

the next:)
love gemmword

you’re birthday is offically over, but I find myself strangly reluctant to mark this goal as done:)
I’m so sorry I didn’t get your main present finished in time, but I’m leaving you a cryptic clue:)
Well two actually, but as I can’t put two photos in the same post, you’ll have to look as this photo, then the photo in the next entry. Annnnnnnnd make a decision:)
Have fun:)
love gemmword

Sorry I’m late to the party. I’m so glad you had a happy day yesterday, and I’m hoping you’ll have a great year to come filled with health, romance, poetry, and other good things.

I remember first really “noticing” you when I commented on the first entry that you made last October under your goal “Stop being so shy around women” (which you have since marked “Worth Doing”). You weren’t “Proud to be Poetry Boy” back then. If I remember right, you were Jamie, the Buckeye fan. This morning, I checked back through your older entries, and it looks like most of those were quotations, which generated a few cheers and even fewer comments. But after that point, you were writing longer and more varied entries, and “conversing” with and being cheered by more and more different people.

And lately, most of your entries generate at least 30-40 comments each, and your entry here, asking for help with a crazy female admirer, generated an amazing 319 comments! My goodness, what a change!

Reflecting on that amazing change brought to mind a little poem that I like. So here it is for you, in honor of all your progress in this past year, and all your new friendships here on 43-Things, and all the good things that I suspect are in store for you in the future. Happy Birthday, and many happy returns!

YOUR WORLD by Georgia Douglas Johnson

Your world is as big as you make it
I know, for I used to abide
In the narrowest nest in a corner
My wings pressing close to my side.

But I sighted the distant horizon
Where the sky-line encircled the sea
And I throbbed with a burning desire
To travel this immensity.

I battered the cordons around me
And cradled my wings on the breeze
Then soared to the uttermost reaches
With rapture, with power, with ease!

_{Venus and Adonis, Bartolomeo Spranger, 1597}

Fine Knacks for Ladies

_{Jacobean Poem, Anonymous}

Fine knacks for ladies, cheap, choice, brave and new!
Good pennyworths – but money cannot prove.
I keep a fair but for the fair to view.
A beggar may be liberal of love.
Though all my wares be trash, the heart is true,
The heart is true.

Great gifts are guiles and look for gifts again;
My trifles come as treasures from my mind.
It is a precious jewel to be plain.
Sometimes in shell the orient’st pearl we find.
Of others take a sheaf, of me a grain.
Of me a grain.

Within this pack pins, points, laces and gloves,
And divers toys fitting a country fair;
But in my heart, where duty serves and loves,
Turtles and twins, court’s brood, a heavenly pair.
Happy the heart that thinks of no removes!
Of no removes.

Wishing You a Year of Health, Romance, and Poetry, Jamie!

_{image: www.khm.at}